I am not sure what to make it of it, but I can say it does not sound that far out. Basically, it says that Apple is going to release new Ultra Mac's that sport 4 and 8 way 970's, and the current Powermac line will go to the Motorola 7457. While I am not happy that the 970 may not come out in the current Power Mac, I think that this is great news for Apple, finally a respectable workstation. Anyway, I am not sure how credible MacWhispers is, so I am not sure how credible this news is, take it with a grain of salt. Anyway,

I saw this to, who knows? Im waiting for a SUPER CUBE with a 970 at 1.8ghz, 1 pci slot,Ati's 9700, lighted keyboard, 10 gb of mem! Now where and when can i place my order? Anything from apple will be great as long as we dont get another teeny weeny moto bump. If they come out with a 7457 Motochip in a ultramac there is going to be a lot of Primal Screaming going on.

Personally, I think it would be a mistake to put 970's in workstations and not in the current Powermac line, I think this will be bad for sales, and most people would not buy the workstation, Apple has to cater to the semi-professionals and power users who don't need 4 or 8 processors. I think Apple should put 970's in the current line as they just have established it: single, single, and dual, and then for the workstation: dual, quad, and 8-way. Something tells me this is far off, maybe a year or two. IBM might not be able to handle that king of demand with that chip, but who knows? What do you guys think?

Powermacs will be Dead in the Water if they attemtp to sell "peashooter" G4's by years end. It doesn't matter if you have 4 G4's if they are half the speed of a Dual Xeon Workstation.

Forget Quad or Octo systems. We'll be lucky enough to get Dual 970's to start. Once the 970 drops to .09 micron perhaps IBM will implement Dual Core capability which we lessen the amount of CPU traces on the Motherboard.

Originally posted by nuckinfutz the poor fool who gave them that info.

Powermacs will be Dead in the Water if they attemtp to sell "peashooter" G4's by years end. It doesn't matter if you have 4 G4's if they are half the speed of a Dual Xeon Workstation.

Forget Quad or Octo systems. We'll be lucky enough to get Dual 970's to start. Once the 970 drops to .09 micron perhaps IBM will implement Dual Core capability which we lessen the amount of CPU traces on the Motherboard.

I don't see it. Why would Apple further complicate their product line like this? No, the PowerMac G4 will give way to the 970 when it's ready. The G4 will trickle down the line, pretty much like the G3 did when the G4 came out.

Yup. Apple is not dumb enough to use yet another G4 in their professional line of computers. People are fed up with G4 and waiting for G5/970. I certainly am. If they miss the boat this year, it will mean more market share loss.

I *highly* doubt Apple is capable of doing dual, let alone quad or octuple 970s. Doing 4 450MHz DDR buses for the processors alone is NOT trivial. According to discussion on arstechnica, Apple will probably have to use an IBM supplied northbridge chip, and IBM will probably keep the 4/8 (and maybe 2) way chips for their own stuff. A single 970 should be plenty fast, and it'll really get interesting when it transitions to .09 micron.

MacRumors attracts a broad audience
of both consumers and professionals interested in
the latest technologies and products. We also boast an active community focused on
purchasing decisions and technical aspects of the iPhone, iPod, iPad, and Mac platforms.